SERMON
Consecration Sunday
Christ Church, Guilford, Connecticut
October 28, 2012
Proper 25-B
Jeremiah 31:7-9
Psalm 126
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 10:46-52
The life of a follower of Jesus must ultimately be built on a foundation of gratitude. That is to say our spiritual, psychological, emotional and even physical health must be grounded in gratitude for us fully to explore and begin to experience the depth and breadth and height of God, who is love.
This includes our relationship with our material possessions – including the financial resources at our disposal.
Oh, no! Another financial stewardship sermon!
I agree with The Rev. Bob Dannals in admitting that “[t]he word "stewardship" now has a dull ring . . . has now become a cliché, being encrusted with years and years of being seen merely as the annual effort of churches seeking funds for program and ministries . . . taking on the drone of an annual address given to a sleepy congregation on a Sunday morning. But in terms of what it is intended to mean, it is not dull at all. Stewardship has to do with a person's calling, it is the meaningful work one does, it is the heartfelt summons to be a giver, to extend oneself for the sake of others.” (Dannals, http://www.holyinnocents.org/clergy-corner/stewardship-redeeming-a-truncated-word/ (paraphrase)
– and to do so from a grateful heart. Gratitude is the life-blood flowing through the Church, the Body of Christ, allowing it to function and grow as a strong and healthy organism. Gratitude is the essential nutrient for parish churches and for individuals.
For Christians, the reason to give is because our hearts are grateful to God for the gifts and abundance God has poured out upon us. There is not one breath we take that is not a gift from God, and the person who is truly, deeply aware of that reality cannot help but be grateful.
I have found, however, that instructing people to be grateful is of little use. Gratitude is something that grows from within. Like love, it cannot be commanded or compelled
So then, where does it come from? It comes from the place all healthy spirituality comes, it comes from a heart, from a person, who has gotten honest with herself and with God. It comes from a person, no matter how advanced he may be along the spiritual path, [a person] who says, “Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief;” from the person who can say, “Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid,” and who, further, can rejoice in that most intimate, even invasive, knowledge because this all-knowing, all-seeing God is deeply in love with each of us and wants only to draw ever closer to us in the very depth of our being and in our daily journey through life.
Still and all, if this gratitude and this trust in God’s love and mercy cannot be commanded or compelled, then how do we become truly grateful?
Let me tell you my own story. There was a time in my life, a time after I had been ordained for several years, when I had become grumbly, unhappy and discontent. Harrison actually knew me not only in Seminary but also in this somewhat miserable part of my life. I was discontent with those around me because I was essentially discontent with myself. I was anything but consistently grateful even though I knew intellectually that gratitude was the only proper spiritual and psychological orientation for a follower of Jesus. Nevertheless, I wasn’t such a person. Until that is, one day during this extended funk, I was walking between the church office building and the church itself (I could show you the very spot where it happened) when I stopped dead in my tracks and said (I think it was in my heart, but it may even have been out loud), “God, I am not a very grateful person, and I don’t know what to do about that. I sincerely pray, from the bottom of my heart, that you will help me become a grateful person.” I suppose I was not unlike the blind man in our Gospel reading for today. Jesus seems to have wanted him to ask for what he wanted. And he did. And I did.
Now I’d love to tell you that I was instantly transformed, but I wasn’t. In fact I may have largely forgotten about that moment on a day to day basis. But looking back, I know that was the beginning of a change in my heart. Slowly, week by week, month by month, almost imperceptibly, I was becoming what I had prayed for. Now I’m still no paragon of selfless gratitude, but now, several years later, I am a profoundly changed person. And it began that day, that moment when I stood stock still, honest with the universe, with God and myself, and asked God for what I know my heart was made to be. Grateful to God and to so many others for the richness in my life, grateful even for the hard and trying times that have made me who I am.
Generous giving will flow inevitably and naturally from such people as that.
And giving how and how much? Consecration Sunday asks each of us to consider the biblical standard of the Tithe as a benchmark. A tithe, ten-percent of whatever we choose to designate as our income.
For some this will be relatively easy to do if they will. For others it will be a struggle and a challenge. All of that is just fine. The important thing is that, with a spirit of gratitude, we sincerely ask what proportion, what percentage of our income, is God prompting us to dedicate to God’s mission, to God’s kingdom, through the local church. What proportion? It begins by asking, “What percentage am I currently giving?” and, “Am I happy with?” Is what I am currently doing fulfilling what a truly grateful heart prompts me to do? If not, then the invitation is for you and me to step up and do more. Most likely not all at once, but as time passes, allowing ourselves to become more and more generous.
Our spiritual health is easily indicated by how much of our wealth we are cheerfully able to give away. I actually think J.R.R Tolkein was very wise about this. If you know the story, you know that there was a ring that granted its owner wealth and power, and the longer the owner clung to the ring and its benefits, the less and less the owner remained truly herself, finally becoming not the owner of the ring, but the miserable creature who had come to be owned by it. It is the same with our many possessions, if we cannot hold them loosely, willing to let them go for the good of the world and for our own spiritual health, then we must ask if we indeed own them or they now own us.
My prayer for us all is that we become the people “happy, joyous and free” that God made us to be – and will empower us to be – if we ask for and accept the gift of gratitude that God will give us. May God fill you with gratitude, and may that gratitude shine through us as a beacon and example to those around us. Each of us could audit our checkbooks to see what they reveal about how we use the treasure entrusted to us. But I am not asking you to audit your checkbook. I am asking each of us to audit our hearts. (Ibid, Dannals)
